Regardless of the specific circumstances in which an insult is spoken, hearing an insult is like getting a “little slap in the face.” A group of researchers found the short-term effects of repeated verbal insults were comparable to those of repeated positive or neutral evaluations using electroencephalography (EEG) and skin conductance recordings. The findings give us a rare chance to investigate the relationship between emotion and language. The findings of the study were published in the journal Frontiers in Communication. Humans are a highly social species. Humans are a highly social species, relying on constantly changing cooperation dynamics and other types of interpersonal relations to survive and thrive. Language has a major role in these relations, fundamentally structuring interpersonal behaviors. verbal insults can still have a powerful effect, regardless of who the insult was about, and continue to do so even after being repeated several times Although experience proves that words can hurt, not much is known about how people process insults. We rely on ever-changing cooperation dynamics and interpersonal relations to survive and thrive. Words have a big role to play in these relationships, as they are tools used to understand interpersonal behavior. As such, words can hurt, but we know little about how the impact of words comes about as someone processes an insult.
“The exact way in which words can deliver their offensive, emotionally negative payload at the moment they are being read or heard is not yet well-understood,” said corresponding author Dr. Marijn Struiksma, of Utrecht University. Because insults pose a threat to our reputation and against our “self,” they provide a unique opportunity to research the interface between language and emotion. Struiksma continued: “Understanding what an insulting expression does to people as it unfolds, and why,” is critical for psycholinguists interested in how language moves people, as well as others interested in the details of social behavior. Struiksma and her colleagues wanted to examine whether processing verbal insults is less sensitive to repetition than compliments, and if so, which cognitive stages are implicated in the adaptation and which aren’t.
Struiksma explained, “We assume that verbal insults trigger a cascade of rapidly consecutive or overlapping processing effects and that different parts of that cascade might be differently affected by repetition, with some of them rapidly wearing off, and others remaining strongly responsive for a long time.” EEG and skin conductance electrodes were applied to 79 female participants. They then read a series of repeated statements that realized three different speech acts: insults (for example, “Linda is horrible”), compliments (for example, “Linda is impressive”), and neutral, factually correct descriptive statements (for example, “Linda is Dutch”). To examine whether the impact of the words depended on who the statement was about, half of the three sets of statements used the participant’s name, and the other half used somebody else’s. The experiment involved no real interaction between the participants and another human. The participants were told that the statements were being made by three different men.